Miracle Springs
by Sashocirrione
Summary: Mikami and Sayu have an accidental meeting at a mixed-gender hot springs, and things get very heated and a little insane. Creepy and sad. MikamixSayu and maybe a very slight MatsudaxSayu.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **"Miracle Springs"

**Author: **Sashocirrione

**Spoilers: **MAJOR Spoilers for everything up to nearly the end of the entire series.

**Warnings: **NO UNDERAGE READERS. Rated M for a reason. Sexual activities.

**Summary: **Mikami and Sayu have an accidental meeting at a mixed-gender hot springs, and things get very heated and a little insane. Creepy and sad.

**Pairings: **MikamixSayu and maybe a very slight MatsudaxSayu

**Additional Notes: **All canon events previous to this have happened as normal, except that Mikami somehow knows Light's name before the Yellow Box (perhaps he did unauthorized research?). Sayu is 20 years old by the time Mikami becomes part of the Death Note storyline, so in this fic Sayu is NOT underage (and Mikami is 27). The specific hot springs noted here are entirely fictional.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Death Note, and I do not make any money from these writings.

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**CHAPTER 1**

Sayu had stopped talking entirely months ago. Something inside her just wanted to break, but perhaps there was nothing left to break. Everything within was already broken. It felt as if her mind existed in several pieces that couldn't quite connect with each other, her consciousness detached.

She wanted to cry and scream at the top of her lungs about how unfair it had been. She desired to kick things and drive her fists into a wall again and again. She wanted to do it badly enough that she often felt a kind of disbelief that she wasn't doing it.

But, instead, she did nothing at all. She stared into space. Her mother and the nurse that had been hired were the ones who spoon-fed her when she ate. She sat in a wheelchair most of the day even though she was perfectly capable of walking. And she considered it a kind of minor miracle, born of embarrassment and sheer force of will, that she was able to go to the bathroom by herself instead of wearing a diaper.

Every action she took, no matter how small, was a fierce mental battle. She was tired from fighting. Each day it was a strength-draining effort to not sink even further into a passive state.

They tried all sorts of treatments, of course. There were always plenty of psychiatrists and doctors to visit. Sometimes they sent her to homes for the rich mentally ill, secluded mansions where attendants fussed over your every need all day and where they often took you outside on visits into the most beautiful gardens imaginable. They were supposed to be places to rest and gather mental strength, but Sayu never lasted more than two or three days.

It just didn't feel like home without her mother, and she'd lapse into constant moaning and fidgeting, and she'd eventually give herself a fever from sheer worry. They'd send her back home every time. Home, where she belonged, where she had the feeling that if she just tried harder to care, the pieces of her mind would come together and start healing. But did she want to heal? That was a tricky question.

Sayu remembered the exact moment when everything had begun to fall apart inside. It had been during the kidnapping. Mello had been a gentleman, surprisingly protective, and he didn't let his underlings touch her, though she guessed from their lecherous glances what they might do if they weren't restrained by orders. Mello had only slipped up once, and he'd probably never realized it.

No, they hadn't raped her, nothing like that.

It was words that had destroyed her mind, nothing else, only words. The moment was from an overheard conversation. Sayu remembered the terrified thoughts running through her head as she heard, by pressing her ear against the wall, the most horrifying thing imaginable. Kira had to be a member of the task force, and there were good reasons given as to why.

Knowing that Kira was part of the task force, Sayu had first thought of her father on that team and her brother. They were both in terrible danger. Kira had infiltrated their organization and was surely planning to strike soon. Light and her father would both die.

But she'd had many hours to herself, to think over what she'd heard, and it didn't make sense. She picked at the little holes in it, trying to figure it out. If Kira had infiltrated the investigation team, then why wasn't everyone already dead? From Kira's perspective, they'd all need to die at the same time, or any survivors would act against Kira.

Yes, why weren't they already dead? She could only come up with one reason. Kira obviously faced a choice between killing everyone else on the team or killing nobody on the team, an all or nothing choice, and maybe Kira was reluctant to kill someone else who was on the team with him.

Why would Kira feel like that? Wasn't Kira a remorseless murderer, someone who took out any cops who got in his way without a second thought? That trail of thinking had led her to her father and brother. If Kira had any human feelings left in him, he'd be reluctant to kill a family member. Two people in the same family on the Kira task force, with one of those two being Kira, that would solve the puzzle.

The thought of her father being Kira was so ridiculous she'd dismissed it immediately.

But Light had been a different matter.

As soon as the speculation of Light being Kira had entered her head, it had made so much sense it was scary. Light had changed his personality just when Kira first appeared and there had been so many mysterious habits he'd picked up then. Light was smart enough to work alongside those investigating Kira without revealing himself as Kira, wasn't he? Almost nobody could be that smart, but Light was. Yes, he was exactly that smart.

And then there had been more details pouring into her mind, all sorts of little things that just matched up perfectly, leaving her chest constricted, her brain in a whirl, her fingernails digging into her palms so hard they bled.

And then her father had come to that nasty underground place, and traded for her life as she shivered behind a glass wall with a gun pointed at her. He had traded away a notebook that could kill people just by writing down their names, and with that display of a mafia member using the notebook to kill a man in front of her on Mello's phoned orders, Sayu understood how Kira's power worked. She knew the secret.

She'd gotten a good look at that notebook as it was passed over to the criminals. It was slim and black, and she thought she might have seen the top of a notebook just like that barely sticking out of Light's backpack years ago, precisely when the Kira killings had started, but surely her memory wasn't so good as to be reliable about something like that.

No, it had to be a mistake, a silly delusion of hers created from all the stress of being a hostage.

But then she'd remembered another notebook that had looked very similar, if her memory was correct. This one had been unobtrusively held in the hands of Misa Amane the first time she'd ever appeared at the Yagami household, when she'd claimed to be a classmate of Light's who was returning a notebook to him. But Sayu had seen the notebook across half the distance of a darkened yard at night, so perhaps she was mistaken. Many notebooks looked slim, and perhaps they all looked black in the dark, and certainly there were many black, slim notebooks in the world that had no power to kill anyone.

But Misa Amane was never a college student and certainly hadn't been one at that time. Though that first visit had been just when the second Kira had been sending out videos trying to meet the true Kira, and Misa absolutely adored Light, and Misa was a strong Kira supporter, and shouldn't the Kira task force be worried about one of their members having a Kira supporter as a long-term live-in girlfriend?

There had to be another explanation for the two notebooks that Sayu had only gotten the slightest glimpses of and had never really paid any attention to.

Just thinking about it, she could feel it inside her. Insanity was swirling in her brain. She'd somehow made all this up, implanted the clues in her memory, and completely lost her mind.

She didn't trust herself to say anything, so she had said nothing when she was passed over to the custody of her father. She only fell into his arms and softly sobbed into his shoulder. Thankfully, he didn't seem to expect anything else from her at first, so she was able to not say a word while she gave herself a little more time to think over everything so she could realize the real truth, the kind of truth where Light was not a murderer at all and everything would quickly go back to normal.

Her father soon began to ask her questions, though, and his face looked more and more concerned when she said nothing in response. Her throat closed up every time she attempted to mumble even as little as one word in response, and that made her burn with shame, the humiliating fact that she couldn't even say something like, "I'm fine," or "Thanks for rescuing me," or "I love you, Dad," or anything else that would ease the worried look on his face.

Instead of talking, she patted his hand and smiled at him to try to show him that she was fine, that she would be fine soon. In return, he lessened his attempts to get her to talk and gave her a little more quiet and leeway, extending through the long plane ride back to Japan.

That gave her hours to attempt to pull her thoughts back together to form a world that she could live in, along with a few hours of refreshing sleep on the reclined plane seat, but the world only seemed to get more distant from her as the time piled up.

And then all her time was gone and she was home again and they were demanding that she say something. Her father, her mother, they became painful voices, pulling at her. She turned away from them, staring at walls and ceilings. Sayu couldn't get a single word out of her treacherous throat.

Even Matsuda had come to try to interview her about the kidnapping, and he looked so earnest and concerned and shy that her throat almost opened enough for her to talk. She had taken a deep breath and actually expected that she was about to say something, but then her throat had closed again before she could speak.

That had been months ago. Sayu rarely moved much any more, the world getting fuzzy and slow around her. It hurt to pay attention to it. She was only motivated enough to walk when the needs of her bladder or her bowel became too much to bear, and then she remembered her determination to never wear diapers and somehow made it to the bathroom on her own.

Doctors had told her mother that it would be good for Sayu to go outside, to go into public places and to stores and to be around people. That was when the wheelchair had first appeared, a few weeks after the kidnapping, and Sayu still wouldn't take a step outside on her own, but if someone prodded her and insisted loudly, she'd get just enough energy to climb into the wheelchair.

And then, her mother or her nurse would push her, so many places, colors and landscapes flowing past her, men and women and children and cars and buildings and sidewalks. In the air around her were words and at times even music. It was all the same. All of it consisted merely of things that went past Sayu and did not grab her attention.

Sometimes she wanted to tell them. She could feel the words in her throat, ready to come out.

"Light could be Kira. Light is almost certainly Kira. I know things that make it seem as if Light is Kira, please explain them, please tell me what they really mean; please; please; please."

But her throat closed up and the words died every single time.

She couldn't say them. She couldn't say anything.

It was hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. If L couldn't catch Kira, if all the detectives who worked alongside Light couldn't catch Kira, if her own father had never noticed Light being Kira, then what good would it do to say anything? It would sound exactly like the ravings of a lunatic, and even if someone did pay attention, that person would end up dead as soon as they began to act on Sayu's tips, so it would still be true that no progress would be made. The only thing that could possibly happen would be more dead people.

There was no point to saying anything because nothing would be improved by it, and because it really would be the ravings of a lunatic.

Sayu knew she was wrong in her delusions. The insane were always wrong, and she was certainly insane.

And then her father died and she wondered if Light had done it and her throat was more tightly closed than ever before, so tight that she sometimes thought the air must stop flowing in and out of her lungs.

She couldn't look Light in the eye any more. She couldn't look anyone in the eye after her father died. On those rare times when someone would grab her attention, her gaze would invariably fasten on their chin or their forehead.

Sayu knew it was her fault for never saying anything, and yet she also knew that everything she suspected about Light was a complete lie, a sickness that had infected her mind and made her daily life into an impossible series of tasks.

Sayu did not believe she could get better. But they never gave up on trying different treatments, and that is how they even ended up looking for miracles.

One day, Sayu's mother told her that a decision had been made to send her to Kiseki Shinsei Springs, nicknamed "Miracle Springs" for all the miraculous healings that supposedly took place there.

Sayu did not pay much attention as her mother spoke to her about all the people who had bathed in Miracle Springs and had been cured on the spot of serious illnesses such as cancer or schizophrenia. Bits and pieces of the stories worked their way into Sayu's mind, in the fragmented way that the outside world tended to impinge on Sayu's consciousness, but she did not know any single story from start to finish.

It did not really matter if she didn't know the stories. They were likely due to selective retelling and the placebo effect and just plain lies.

Sayu had the impression that her mother considered Miracle Springs the last chance for a cure. Sayu was sure it would be yet another disappointment and wondered who had convinced her mother to try something so unorthodox.

Sayu knew it was an odd choice for a few different reasons. One was that her family wasn't very religious. Another was that it was a mixed-gender hot springs, without any divider to separate the males and females. Though holy sites were a little different than any ordinary springs, it was normally true that young women avoided mixed-gender springs, because of the risk of sexual harassment, even if it was just in the form of stares.

Everyone knew that mixed-gender hot springs were usually full of men, with just a few unattractive or old women who were completely outnumbered by the males.

Sayu ended up being taken to Miracle Springs by her nurse alone. Her mother was sick on that day, but a great sum of non-refundable money had already been paid to reserve a place for Sayu, and so Sayu was sent there with only the nurse for company and protection.

Sayu was first wheeled into the nearby shrine so she could receive a blessing and hear the myth of how the spring's miraculous powers were first discovered.

She barely heard the shrine maiden reciting the legend in a well-practiced voice. It was something about a snake and a fox and a clay pot and a precious gift promised to all humankind. The bits Sayu did hear sounded like extremely generic folklore. Sayu's mind kept drifting off in the middle of sentences, getting lost in the incredible ornate woodwork of the roof. It was warm and stuffy and the air smelled of incense.

Very few of those who attended the service also traveled out back, where there was a maze-like stone building that was a combined changing and purifying area, and then beyond that a series of wide stone steps gradually sank into the earth, disappearing into a bank of thick, white fog.

Dim shapes of bathers were already out there, barely discernable through the mist that hugged close to the surface of the waters.

A fragment of something Sayu had been told before, but had paid no attention to at the time, suddenly popped into her head. It was something about how the bathing area was considerably downstream from the source of the springs, and that where the springs spewed from the earth the waters were hot enough to scald both skin and flesh right off your bones.

The nurse had previously stripped Sayu nude, though she'd been barely aware of it at the time, and the nurse was now pushing the wheelchair as close to the edge as it was possible to be and still get out.

Sayu watched as an old man, completely naked, wandered past her without a glance and waded away. The water was milky-white with its high load of minerals and the white fog started just above it, whiteness upon whiteness without a clear boundary between them.

The old man became a gray shape that barely seemed human, and then that shape wavered, twisted, and was entirely indiscernible. It was like disappearing into a supernatural, otherworldly realm. White above and white below, directionless, misty.

No wonder it had inspired legends.

Sayu realized that her thoughts were running more clearly than was usual. Her thinking was unmistakably more linear, not the chaotic mess of scattered fragments that it had been for so long. Paying attention wasn't as difficult as it used to be. Her breathing was fast and hard.

She was frightened of Miracle Springs, of what might happen after she disappeared into it.

Her nurse was trying to urge her up, out of the wheelchair. Sayu swatted at the wrinkled hand being presented to her and stared down, looking between the pale points of her knees to see that unnatural-looking water flowing along the stone steps.

It would surely take her in and devour her. She wasn't ready for it.

She tried to calm her breathing. Perhaps religion was her only hope now. The psychiatrists and the doctors had completely failed.

Religion was everyone's desperate last stand, wasn't it? If you couldn't find the answers, if the pain wouldn't stop, if you wanted to be doing things differently but you didn't know how and nothing else worked, at last you would find yourself, beaten and broken, dragging your sorry carcass off to see what religion could do for you.

Sayu smiled a small, bitter smile, and she felt the dry edges of her lips crack at the unfamiliar movement.

Life wasn't fair. Not when a facial expression could hurt, or when chasing a miracle was the only chance left.

Somehow, somehow, she was letting her nurse take her hand, pulling her out of the wheelchair and leading her to the waters. Sayu's foot went in. It was shockingly warm, warmer than bathwater but not too hot to endure it.

Bit by bit, almost unbelieving that she was moving forward, Sayu went down the stone steps, with the water rising to her knees, then her thighs, then her waist. It was like an immensely warm, enfolding embrace; not as terrifying as she had expected, though it still scared her. All around, on every side, the blankness was positively unsettling. The mist confused her sense of direction, baffling her about the way back, and an irrational belief was growing inside her that the springs must go on forever like this.

Her nurse led Sayu slowly. The water had a current, but it was weak; it never felt as if it would knock Sayu off her feet. And the bottom was mostly-smooth bedrock, dipping down here and there but never with a change in elevation enough to trip her.

There were other figures they passed in the mists, but the nurse led Sayu around them, so that they never fully resolved. Even sound seemed muffled, the reciting of prayers from numerous directions muted and odd.

Sayu's nurse stopped near a rock outcropping that protruded above the water and let go of Sayu's hand, moving slightly away with a watchful expression.

Sayu wondered what she was supposed to do. To continue standing? To crouch down and let the water come up to her neck? To splash to water over herself? To think prayers inside her mind?

Something made her want to try her voice, though, to see if she could speak. If there were a time and place when it might work, it would be here. She was breathing fast. She felt as if she could do it.

And then a grayish thing resolved out of the fog, and continued moving in Sayu's general direction. Sayu thought the person would pass by her left, but then realized she had either misjudged or the person's course had changed. The grayish thing was getting very close. And then features suddenly materialized, of a young man with a lean yet muscled physique, long black hair to his shoulders framing his haughty face and distracted eyes.

She was standing there bare-breasted, but the water gave them both modesty from the hips down. She was fairly sure that he was bending his knees to sink lower in the water to give his private area that concealment. He had the look of someone who was taller than he presently seemed to be in the water.

He glanced her way as if bored and about to glance away, but then his eyes rose up, looking over her head, and his face completely changed in an instant, odd, feverish, almost glowing with some fierce emotion Sayu couldn't identify.

Words spilled from his mouth.

"God's sister!"

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**A/N (Author's Note):**

This fic is kind of a Sayu character study, a possible behind-the-scenes glimpse at what was wrong with Sayu to make her go nearly catatonic, and is also a fill for a request on the dn_kink meme.

The request was: "Mikami and Sayu, in a mixed-gender hot springs."

I've only seen maybe two MikamixSayu fics before, so this is a very rare pairing. I'm not sure if it has any fans, but here it is anyway. I like to write weird pairings; I can't seem to resist trying to make them work.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

The man seemed surprised at what he'd said, as if it had been blurted out with no thought at all.

Despite the disapproving grunt of Sayu's nurse, the man approached even closer, then stopped just out of arm-range. His movements and posture were all extremely respectful, even reverent. He looked like a worshipper deep in prayer, nothing at all like a pervert. It was as if they were standing in front of each other with plenty of clothes on instead of being completely nude.

The devotion in his eyes was intense and burning. Sayu had a deep sense that he was offering her respect and choices, something she hadn't had since the mafia.

Or maybe it was just her crazy mind making up information again.

_Which god's sister? Does he mean Susanoo's sister, the goddess Amaterasu?_

Sayu's mind was going through the possibilities, making a list. There were actually a large number of gods who had sisters. She was surprised she cared enough to spare so much thought for it, when her mind was usually very tired and it was easier to let it drift.

And then he was saying prayers in a breathy rush, so quiet and fast and mixed together that she could only pick out words and phrases here and there, enough to understand that he had pieced together Buddhist and Shinto prayers and some kind of unfamiliar or homegrown religion in a weirdly unique individual mess. Madness, madness, but a method to that madness, with a sense of the meticulous construction and long practice that must have gone into it all.

It wasn't that there was anything wrong with insanity.

No, insanity was comfortable; it was a familiar friend and companion that told Sayu nice things and made her able to sit quietly in her wheelchair without screaming or slitting her wrists into red, wet ribbons.

Insanity was quite comfortable.

The man continued to stare upwards, just above Sayu's head. He was obviously having a religious vision. Sayu wondered what he was seeing, and if she would see something too before she left Miracle Springs.

He kept looking at whatever it was, and mumbling his own unique brand of prayers, and the passing of time seemed like no other interval in Sayu's life, utterly timeless, somehow just a few moments and forever at once, a paradox. It was as if time flowed differently inside the mist, disjointed, but somehow peaceful and right. It worked here, and her mind was better too.

The outside world was of no importance. The past and the future both fell away, discarded and forgotten.

At some point he looked at her face, and there was no perversion in his expression, nothing at all except that which was right and proper, but there was also a deep, burning need, something like desperation and respect mixed together.

Or perhaps Sayu was imagining it all, but she still could not shake off the strong conviction that she was right.

Something miraculous had happened, was still happening.

Sayu felt brave, reckless, ready to do anything. She would no longer sit in her wheelchair or refuse to respond to others. She knew then that she was in the process of seizing the miracle. Everything would be different from now on.

The other bathers were only dim shapes in the fog, all at a distance; so difficult to see that she was half-convinced she was merely imagining them. The water was intensely warm and the air could be felt in distinct layers with separate temperatures, ranging from a heated layer at the level of Sayu's navel all the way up to the high-mountain chill that enveloped Sayu's nose and everything above it.

Something deep within her needed this, needed more of this, and somehow she found the strength to talk welling up inside her, her throat beginning to open.

No, it wasn't that. Sayu suddenly knew the process affecting her wasn't at all like finding the strength to talk. This was not something she had to fight through almost-insurmountable apathy to do, like every small action she would sometimes find the strength for.

Rather than finding the strength to talk, she found herself with the ability to speak, without needing to overcome anything, as if she had suddenly transformed into the capable Sayu that she had been before the kidnapping.

Without effort, Sayu said to her nurse, "Let him be here. Leave us alone together."

It was easy, as if she had never stopped speaking. As if she would now be able to do it whenever she wished.

The nurse's mouth was open, astonishment etched into the wrinkles of her face.

The nurse said, "But-"

Sayu said, "I am telling you. Do you understand? I am _telling_ you."

The nurse's mouth open and closed, opened again, and then the nurse made a noise, a disapproving kind of "hmmmmph" sound, before retreating, transforming into just another of the dim, unreal shapes.

The man's eyes dropped, looking lower on Sayu's body than her face, but he was still so respectful, the expression on his face clearly stating that he didn't think he was worthy of whatever was happening, but that he also welcomed it, wanted it. He shuffled closer and reached out toward her hand, shy, hesitant.

He grasped it, his fingers warm and wet, his movements subservient and reverent, his gaze moving to her face and lingering, as if to check for any objection, before he pulled her hand further upward with a tender gentleness.

Drops of water ran down his hand to hers.

He was staring as if he couldn't believe what was happening, as if he were still in the throes of his vision.

It was obvious he was trying to kiss the back of her hand, but she pulled him in for a real kiss, needing his wet, naked skin pressed all along hers.

He flinched back, his eyes wide and shocked, but then they locked with hers and understanding seemed to dawn. He did not resist as she draped herself along the contours of his toned, hard muscles and found his mouth with hers. He was cautious, as if he dared not grasp her with anything other than gentleness, as if he were waiting for her to lead the way.

As their mouths slowly explored each other and Sayu's fingers traced the shapes of his abdominal muscles, his eyes looked up, over her head, and his face was once again suffused with an intense expression of ecstasy that could only be religious. She was certain that he was still caught up in his vision, in whatever holy sights he alone was able to see in the mists above.

He broke the kiss to whisper, "Sayu Yagami, I salute you and will forever serve God."

She did not think that he could have possibly guessed her name by anything other than divine inspiration. Sayu was sure he was a stranger, and equally sure that the nurse had not revealed her name.

She half-wondered if he were actually some manifestation of the spring, a vision that seemed touchable and solid in this place but who was not a person that existed in the real world, but rather a spirit who would help those who needed miracles.

Anything was possible at Miracle Springs, wasn't that what the shrine maiden had said?

Or perhaps Sayu was entirely mistaken and her nurse had spoken to this man, unseen and unheard, at some time when Sayu had been lost in her own mind. But Sayu did not think this man had been attending the service in the shrine, or that he had been anywhere else she'd gone.

Something firm hit her thigh. She knew what it was.

A thought occurred to her that she was doing something wrong, but she dismissed it.

She was experiencing her miracle, along with this man who was also experiencing a miracle of his own, his vision of a goddess, and it was wrong to throw away miracles.

When miracles were given to you, it was important to let them happen, to experience them completely. Holding back was simply not an option. Sayu could feel that former life of the wheelchair and the closed throat somewhere back there in the ordinary world, and the thought of returning to those routines was horrifying beyond anything that had ever frightened her before.

She needed to break free of that lifestyle so strongly that she could never be captured by it again. She needed to fully absorb the miracle, explore it, and make it a part of herself forever.

With her heart beating fast she reached down into the milky-white mineral-laden water, down to where that firm thing lurked unseen, and curled her fingers around it.

He let out a half-stifled, choked cry and jerked. His whole body stiffened. She almost thought he was going to slither out of her grasp and retreat then, but he stayed, once again mumbling half-heard prayers to himself, very fast, and this time Sayu heard among the garbled words a few mentions of what sounded like "Kira" being repeated.

For a moment Sayu thought she was going to be locked back into her world of muteness and passivity, but then she realized that everything of the present time was her miracle, and nothing would ever rob her of it, and that the world beyond the drifting mists did not matter.

She could prove it didn't matter.

She whispered to this stranger, "Light is Kira."

His eyes got solemn then, and his movements even more reverent, his head bowed, his limbs shivering.

A thrill coursed through her body. Talking was so easy, and she could even say the worst thing, the very worst thing. She'd confided the secret that had been stuck in her throat for months, and she'd done it without any effort, and she didn't care, it didn't matter, it was freeing just to say it.

She felt his hard length twitching in her hand and she tried to guide it between her legs, tried to climb onto his body, but she was unpracticed, her limbs weak, and she slipped instead, half-falling into the water as he caught her.

It had been so long since she'd had a man between her legs, so long since she'd even touched herself. She felt foolish and giddy and a little insane.

He stood up to his full height then. He had indeed been crouching in the water before. His erection was just above the water line, covered with droplets. And he used his strong arms to pull her up close to him, supporting her hips and her back, thrusting against her but not inside, mumbling prayers again in a rush of words almost too fast to understand.

The water was warm and slick over all their skin, dripping slowly down them. Sayu licked his chest, drinking drops, feeling his hard pectoral muscles jumping at her touch.

Everything was so strange, but she needed something like this, something different, she needed to take action, to refuse to ever be passive again.

His belly was pressed tightly to hers, his stomach muscles clenching. He seemed almost afraid but very eager. She clung to his body, her legs slung over his hips.

And he wanted to please her. He whispered in her ear to tell him everything she wished for him to do, and she whispered back, reveling in being able to talk, in being able to express her needs so simply and directly, without any effort.

She was almost ready to burst from held-back desires, not just of this, of being with a man, but of all the things she hadn't done for months.

Though it was quick, it was still almost too much waiting by the time he slid a finger inside her.

And then he slipped a thumb near his finger but outside, and gently thrummed her hard little nub until she was begging him in almost incoherent whispers, panting into his shoulder, hardly being able to complete a word as surges of pleasure moved through her body, along with need, need, and more need, giving in to her instincts. Sayu shuddered as she came, trembling and gasping and then whispering, "Please, now," in the stranger's ear.

His finger removed itself from inside and she missed that intimate internal touch. He leaned back slightly, giving her better stability and lifting her up high enough, so she could feel the very tip beginning to nudge inside her, almost overwhelming in her post-orgasmic sensitivity.

Sayu knew she was insane, to be doing something like this. But she wanted it so badly; the ability to take action, to voice her desires and then satisfy them.

And the outside world simply didn't exist.

With a whispered prayer he slid it entirely within, stretching her, filling her up with an intense sensation of pressure and fullness. All her weight was pressing down on the thing inside her. It was a strongly physical experience, making her feel alive. Sayu was feeling every part of her body more clearly, connected to her physical self much more than she'd been for months.

Then she was riding him, but he was doing all the work, muscles flexing as he lifted her bodily up and down with the strength of someone who certainly must work out on a regular basis. Each penetration was forceful with the weight of her body driving it, pushing his hard organ into her innermost depths with a filling, stretching sensation like nothing she'd ever experienced before.

And all that time, he kept slipping a finger between their bodies to tease her hard little nub, giving her extra jolts of pleasure, more than just the friction of that part against his damp public hair as she grinded her crotch against his body.

This kind of strange love-making, beautiful and forceful, made her want to sob loudly in sheer pleasure, but she stifled those sounds and instead whispered and panted and clasped her legs around his torso, scrabbling at him with her knees, wildly trying to pull him in further, though she knew each forceful thrust was already as deep as it could possibly be.

Where they were joined together was a slick, hot, tingling place of rising energy, each wave of pleasure cresting higher with his hard probing, as he was repeatedly opening her up, getting all the way in and stretching even the deepest crevices far inside.

She almost didn't notice the mumbled prayers that continued to pour from his mouth, more nonsensical than ever.

The tingles shot down Sayu's legs, lingering strangely in the tips of her toes, where they could go no further. Her entire body was tensing instinctively, out of her control but in a good way.

She was exhausted, exhausted but giddy, with a kind of bubbling happiness welling up inside her.

His tight abdominal muscles working against her were almost setting her off.

And then that finger snaked between their bodies once more. Sayu whimpered loudly as it found its target and brushed her just right, just right and she arched her back and came hard, with a blinding pleasure, only dimly aware of her legs squeezing his hips tighter than ever before, of the involuntary jerks of her body. All the tension was releasing, and releasing, being overwhelmed by the immensely good feelings between her legs, an almost glowing feeling.

Then she was completely limp, but he was holding her perfectly, supporting her so well that she could just melt into his arms. He'd never let her fall. She dimly realized that they were close enough to the rock outcropping that any mistake on his part could have resulted in her knocking her head or scraping her back, but he hadn't made any mistake, he'd held her perfectly.

And pleasured her wonderfully.

She didn't know what to say. What she had just done was a completely insane thing, wasn't it? Grabbing a stranger for anonymous sex was one of the last things Sayu could imagine herself doing.

But it had been very good. And she felt alive, whole, cleansed of her problems. She could talk. The rules weren't the same here, in this white-on-white mystical world. Her confidence was back, and she knew that somehow, everything would get solved. It might be a little complicated, but she could figure out something.

She didn't want to think about it quite yet, though. Her mind wanted to rest a bit longer in this beautiful place, this miraculous place. Decisions could be made later, after she'd tested her voice for a few days and made sure she'd completely seized her victory over the incredible passivity.

He moved inside her again then, where it was sensitive and tingling, just a few short thrusts, and then he pulled out, leaning her backwards and sliding it along her stomach, ejaculating over her navel.

He clutched her tightly, supporting her with strong hands under her back as he said, "I am sorry I did not have a condom. I did not think... I did not think anything like this would happen. I hope this will help. I do not have any diseases."

Sayu laughed at his naiveté in thinking that pulling out would make any real difference, and pressed at the skin in her upper arm to show him the outline of the contraceptive implant there.

Sayu said, "Don't worry about this. Everything will be wonderful."

It seemed odd to be talking of such practical matters after such a mind-blowing experience.

Sayu looked at his face as he lowered her into the water and washed the semen from her belly. His face was still aglow with something more than sexual pleasure.

They'd shared a rapture together, a religious experience. Sayu could feel a sappy smile stretching her lips.

Sayu said, "This is a miracle. This is divine inspiration."

She looked up into the mists, wondering what vision he had seen.

She wanted to continue clinging to him. Those decisions she would need to make soon, they weren't nice, clean decisions at all. That was the real world out there, with all its pain and responsibility, not like this miraculous world in the mists.

But as long as she could talk, she had the responsibility to do something, and she knew she would.

He finished with her belly and softly said, "Kira has blessed us."

He set her on her feet and kissed her once more.

He whispered, "I am sorry that we do not have more time. If you need anything, ask God. It is dangerous to contact me directly, as those who watch God may harm him."

Sayu was still trying to decipher the meaning of his words when he added, "Please, ask God to forgive me. It is possible I have sinned today."

The man was retreating then, and in Sayu's mind various pieces of information were once again coming together in a way she didn't like, in an ugly way, just as before.

It was clear what had happened.

Miracles were unreliable.

Memories were unreliable.

Perceptions and deductions, they were unreliable too. Just because you thought you'd figured something out, it didn't mean... it didn't mean...

Sayu had a sudden memory pop into her head, a crisp-clear scene, even down to the way the clouds rushed over the sun as she stared out the window, the green dress her favorite teacher was wearing, and that teacher's approach to Sayu's desk, impatiently tapping fingernails on the wood to get Sayu's attention.

For some reason Sayu couldn't remember the teacher's name. Her mind was a mess of spots that were overly bright and overly dark and things that she didn't want but she had anyway, and things that she wanted but were always slipping beyond her reach.

But the scene was so clear otherwise, right down to the golden look of the air as the sun all at once came out from behind the clouds, with bright dust motes dancing in the air.

Chalk dust, that was likely it.

Sayu's favorite teacher said, "Sayu, I know you're smarter than this. I followed my suspicions and asked your brother, and he says he does most of your math homework for you. When you actually exert effort, you pick up the concepts so fast that all the others envy you."

Sayu remembered thinking, _But this is so boring. Math is always such a pain._

But she had nodded and promised to do better, and then continued getting Light to help her every single time that her math homework was due again, until suddenly Light was getting awfully reclusive and wasn't much help at all any more.

Stumbling, realizing she was months behind everyone else, she'd painfully, slowly, caught up and it had felt like it was killing her to do so, every step of the process tearing at her resolve.

And Light had become a distant stranger and school was hard, for all that they tried to tell her she was smart it was still hard, and her father was suddenly aging fast in front of her eyes, his hair going gray in just a few short months, his face lined with more and more wrinkles, his steps heavy with stress.

And he was almost never home, not that he had been home often before, but this was worse, much worse.

And once she had come downstairs late at night and found her father sitting in the dark and crying so softly that she at first hadn't realized what was happening. She had placed her hand on his shoulder, and in halting words he'd told her that two co-workers had been killed the previous day by Kira, and how one of the men had collapsed and then died in Light's arms.

Though Light never acted as if a colleague had died. The next time Sayu saw him he didn't seem bothered in the slightest, and it was chilling, it really was chilling to think that Light could watch someone he knew die from that close a vantage point and not show the grief in his daily life.

It just got worse after that, though everyone smiled and tried to have fun and pretended everything was right and good in the world.

And Sayu pretended that she never saw the mean look that would sometimes come into Light's eyes and twist his entire expression until he looked like the most callous murderer that had ever walked the earth.

And then Sayu was back to the present, where she didn't want to be. There was no escape. Everything always eventually led her back to the present, where she had to coexist with herself, with her wheelchair, and with her throat that wouldn't utter anything more than a loud gasp.

She was clinging to the rock outcropping, her legs threatening to collapse underneath her, and the stranger was just a gray shape that was beginning to waver and disappear.

That man, he was involved with Kira, somehow, somehow. He'd known. He knew Light was Kira, just as Sayu knew it.

He'd been saying prayers to Kira, while his lips had been on her, his everything pressed to her bare skin, while he'd been inside her.

He'd called her "God's sister." He'd called Kira "God."

Light was Kira. And this man, this man that she'd let defile her, that she'd enjoyed in filthy lust, this man was somehow working with Kira, as an accomplice or a minion.

He needed to be followed, investigated, and stopped from committing further crimes. The proper authorities needed to be alerted before the man got away.

But it all led back to Light, didn't it? And Light would kill, or be killed, or both, with death blooming around him on every side. It was inescapable.

As usual, her mind was putting things together after they happened.

After it mattered.

When it was too late to do anything, to say anything.

And perhaps it was all her insanity anyway, her wild imagination spinning delusions. She knew she was insane, so how could she be correct?

She wanted to say everything she knew to the nurse, to her mother, to Matsuda, to anyone who would listen. She wanted to demand a cellphone, call the Kira hotline, and say everything she had guessed into that recording machine that surely was sometimes checked by investigators other than Light, but the words were dead in her throat once again.

Her body was limp, heavy, slumping, and the nurse was suddenly there at Sayu's side.

The nurse was wonderful, supporting Sayu's weight, guiding her to her wheelchair, and prompting her slow steps until she got there. It was a nice place to sit, just to sit.

If you sat in a wheelchair and never talked, then they couldn't require you to deal with anything. It was pleasant, really. It was restful.

It was the only way to keep everything from exploding into disaster, and so it was Sayu's family duty. It was her duty to sit, and to be quiet.

And she was very, very good at it.

* * *

**A/N (Author's Note):**

Susanoo and Amaterasu are probably the most famous pair of brother/sister gods in Japanese mythology and the Shinto religion, which is why I had Sayu think of them first.

I always thought it odd that Sayu lapsed into a passive, catatonic-like state after her kidnapping for no reason that Death Note readers/viewers are ever given. Being kidnapped is a traumatic event of itself, but it rarely results in that kind of reaction unless something worse also happened.

Thinking about "something worse", I could only come up with three possibilities: torture, rape, or realizing her brother was probably Kira. I can't imagine either torture or rape happening with Mello's blessing (particularly since there would be no gain in it, because when Mello did something evil it was always for a reason) and I can only partially believe that the mafia guys could have outsmarted Mello to secretly torture or rape Sayu without his consent.

So that leaves the last possibility as seeming to be the most likely, though I'm sure that interpretation was never intended to be canon, because the canon author did not realistically show stories of female characters. They were almost never seen as important enough by the canon author to be explored in any detail, even when those stories related closely to the main plot's events. So, the canon author gave readers/viewers the message that whatever happened to Sayu wasn't important enough to explain or to show in any detail.

I really do wonder what the hell happened to Sayu.

It would have been interesting if this interpretation (without the smut) had been canon, with Sayu floundering in mental illness because of the unspeakable secret, and Light perhaps guessing and then struggling with whether to kill his sister.


End file.
